On Compromise eBook

by a single element of rationality, and weigh, if
you can, the huge burden of custom, unrelieved by
a single leavening particle of fresh thought.
Ponder the share which selfishness and love of ease
have in the vitality and the maintenance of the opinions
that we are forbidden to dispute. Then how pitiful
a thing seems the approval or disapproval of these
creatures of the conventions of the hour, as one figures
the merciless vastness of the universe of matter sweeping
us headlong through viewless space; as one hears the
wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf
gods; as one counts the little tale of the years that
separate us from eternal silence. In the light
of these things, a man should surely dare to live
his small span of life with little heed of the common
speech upon him or his life, only caring that his
days may be full of reality, and his conversation
of truth-speaking and wholeness.

Those who think conformity in the matters of which
we have been speaking harmless and unimportant, must
do so either from indifference or else from despair.
It is difficult to convince any one who is possessed
by either one or other of these two evil spirits.
Men who have once accepted them, do not easily relinquish
philosophies that relieve their professors from disagreeable
obligations of courage and endeavour. To the
indifferent person one can say nothing. We can
only acquiesce in that deep and terrible scripture,
’He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.’
To those who despair of human improvement or the spread
of light in the face of the huge mass of brute prejudice,
we can only urge that the enormous weight and the
firm hold of baseless prejudice and false commonplace
are the very reasons which make it so important that
those who are not of the night nor of the darkness
should the more strenuously insist on living their
own lives in the daylight. To those, finally,
who do not despair, but think that the new faith will
come so slowly that it is not worth while for the
poor mortal of a day to make himself a martyr, we
may suggest that the new faith when it comes will be
of little worth, unless it has been shaped by generations
of honest and fearless men, and unless it finds in
those who are to receive it an honest and fearless
temper. Our plea is not for a life of perverse
disputings or busy proselytising, but only that we
should learn to look at one another with a clear and
steadfast eye, and march forward along the paths we
choose with firm step and erect front. The first
advance towards either the renovation of one faith
or the growth of another, must be the abandonment
of those habits of hypocritical conformity and compliance
which have filled the air of the England of to-day
with gross and obscuring mists.